't open an eye until I half-tumbled out of the chair, well on
toward morning.

By the time Dinky-Dunk got back with the doctor, who most unmistakably
smelt of Scotch whisky, I had breakfast over and the house in order
and the Twins fed and bathed and off for their morning nap. I had a
fresh nightie on little Dinkie, who rather upset me by announcing that
he wanted to get up and play with his Noah's Ark, for his fever seemed
to have slipped away from him and the tightness had gone from his
cough. But I said nothing as that red-faced and sweet-scented doctor
looked the child over. His stethoscope, apparently, tickled Dinkie's
ribs, for after trying to wriggle away a couple of times he laughed
out loud. The doctor also laughed. But Dinky-Dunk's eye happened to
meet mine.

It would be hard to describe his expression. All I know is that it
brought a disagreeable little sense of shame to my hypocritical old
heart, though I wouldn't have acknowledged it, for worlds.

"Why, those lungs are clear," I heard the man of medicine saying to my
husband. "It's been a nasty little cold, of course, but nothing to
worry over."

His optimism struck me as being rather unprofessional, for if you
travel half a night to a case, it seems to me, it ought not to be
brushed aside with a laugh. And I was rather sorry that I had such a
good breakfast waiting for them. Duncan, it's true, did not eat a
great deal, but the way that red-faced doctor lapped up my coffee with
clotted cream and devoured bacon and eggs and hot muffins should have
disturbed any man with an elementary knowledge of dietetics. And by
noon Dinkie was pretty much his old self again. I half expected that
Duncan would rub it in a little. But he has remained discreetly
silent.

Next time, of course, I'll have a better idea of what to do. But I've
been thinking that this exquisite and beautiful animalism known as the
maternal instinct can sometimes emerge from its exquisiteness.
Children are a joy and a glory, but you pay for that joy and glory
when you see them stretched out on a bed of pain, with the shadow of
Death hovering over them.

When I tried to express something like this to Dunkie last night,
somewhat apologetically, he looked at me with an odd light in his
somber old Scotch Canadian eye.

"Wait until you see him really ill," he remarked, man-like, stubbornly
intent on justifying himself. But I was too busy saying a little
prayer, demanding of Heaven that such a